A comparative study of some priority dispatching rules under different shop loads

Abstract

Priority dispatching rules and shop load affect job-shop performance. This paper evaluates ten different priority dispatching rules with respect to six different performance criteria under light, medium and heavy shop loads. Simulation was used as a tool to determine the rankings of the dispatching rules for a given shop load and performance criteria. A comparative study was conducted to investigate the performance of these rules. Two rules, ‘shortest processing time” and ‘least work remaining’, performed well under criteria related to the processing time. It was found that the rules that perform well in average and r.m.s. tardiness perform poorly under percentage-of-jobs-late criterion. The experimental results are conveyed with critical comments on the performance of the dispatching rules under different loading conditions of the shop.

Keywords:

• priority dispatching rules
• shop loading
• job shop